Jesus was a metaphorical theologian in the tradition of the rabbis of his time. He may have spent as much as eighteen years before initiating his itinerate ministry as part of the haberim, a local community of Jews devoted to studying the Scripture. Rabbis typically drew on the rich wealth of stories and themes in Scripture and other rabbis' teachings to fashion their own metaphorical instruction. I have related a few passages where Jesus uses family and household metaphors in passing. I have discussed what is almost certainly Jesus' version of the household code in Matthew 19 and 20. But when we see Jesus employing metaphorical theology in its most developed form, did Jesus have the idea of fictive family and household at the center of his theological understanding? While the evidence may elude our Western minds two millennia later, the answer is most assuredly yes!
We will look in depth at one of the defining parables of Jesus' ministry; what the church would call the Evangelium in Evangelio (the gospel within the gospel.) It is the parable found in Luke 15. Note the first three verses:
1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable: (Luke 15:1-3, NRSV)
We go on to hear about a man who finds his lost sheep, a woman who finds her lost coin, and a man who finds his lost sons. Yet these three stories are called a "parable" in the singular. They are a unit. They are three mutually reinforcing articulations of the same truth.
Also note the audience: Pharisees and Scribes. Kenneth Bailey instructs us to take special note when this type of confrontation develops. This is not Jesus, a country bumpkin, engaging the religious sophisticates. This is Jesus, a peer of the religious sophisticates, sparing with them on their own terms using their own tools. This is the equivalent of a theological heavyweight boxing match. If all you come away with from Jesus' teaching in these circumstances is some trite advice like "be nice to others," then be sure you have missed the parable's point.
These circumstances and this parable are no exception. Jesus is drawing on imagery that dates back centuries into the Old Testament, the image of God as Shepherd. You may ask, what on earth does God as Shepherd have to do with family and household? Much. But we must dig back into the three Old Testament passages and examine them to understand the images Jesus drew on. We will be looking at:
Psalm 23
Jeremiah 23:1-8
Ezekiel 34
Much of this review will come from Kenneth Bailey's sources: Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 and Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israel's Story. We turn now to Psalm 23.
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